Mattel Launches SCRABBLE® Facebook App Outside North America

Talk about late to the game and then having the table pulled out from under you. What’s the point? Just gauging the interest? Still in cahoots with the developers of Scrabulous or perhaps working on some sort of partnership / licensing agreement?

Either way, before bothering to read the articles on the first-ever Hasbro-licensed online Scrabble game (in both the NY Times and Mashable), I figured I’d just launch right into it. I never imagined it would stack up in anyway to Scrabulous, but, as a Social Media experiment, felt it was my duty to at least try it.

Not until AFTER I installed the App on my profile do I get the following message:

The Scrabble legacy is a complicated one. Turns out Mattel has worldwide distribution rights, ex-US and Canada, whereas Hasbro controls the game in North America, as Rafat Ali explained at PaidContent. Mattel partnered with Real Networks last year to produce “casual games,” and purportedly either take over, co-opt, or otherwise undo Scrabulous, however, Hasbro, for its share, has a conflicting digital agreement with Electronic Arts.

I’m not gonna lie about my location just to play your silly game — after all, I’ve got the deluxe, tangible edition right here. Just please don’t make Scrabulous go away!